Prisoner of War

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Ramona Von Trapp stared at her younger sister as their father spoke, almost wishing she could read her thoughts. Victor Von Trapp had been going on for over an hour about the importance of keeping up their studies and remaining studious above all else. At least he was no longer mentioning her part about keeping the house clean or turning away gentlemen callers. And of course the part about staying far away from their enormous home's basement. She was so lost in her thoughts she didn't even hear the servants coming in with the food or notice that she'd began to drift off. Her long red curls were beginning to slide over her shoulders and into her soup but her mind was on the strange roars she and her sister could hear late at night when they ignored their aging father and sneaked down to the dungeon stairs anyway.

Ramona was aware of this as well and made an attempt to reach out for Justin's hand. She needed to tell him of her sister's illness. But tallest of the women caught her hand and yanked her aside. 
She was so surprised she let go of Ophelia even. That was when she got the image of Justin in the midst of all these beautiful women. But it wasn't their names he was whispering...it was hers. "You listen here, you little whore," The woman hissed, grabbing her chin. "He belongs to us. Get that through your pretty little head."

Ophelia was pushed aside by several women as they all scrambled to tell Ramona the same thing. The dark haired girl would soon find herself with her back pressed to the wall, struggling to breathe as she tried to find a way back to her sister.
"Ladies, ladies..." Justin's smooth voice suddenly filled the room. "There is enough of me to share, but for now I think our guest has been a little over exerted." He was smiling warmly as he stepped through the fawning women to gently take Ramona's delicate hand.

Ramona jerked her hand away from him, glaring at him and then the other women in turn. "My sister needs her medication." She said in low hiss. "And you are welcome to him. You have nothing to fear from me, you tittering parakeets." She turned away from them to look for her sister, missing the sight of the one who had first grabbed her showing her teeth.

"Didn't I warn you to stay close to me?" Justin called after her, even as the other women was draping themselves against him. "I can't keep you safe if you run at every chance you get!"

Ramona stopped in midstep and glared at him over her shoulder. "I seem to be walking, sir. I would know if I were running." She said in a soft voice. "I will say it again. In your haste to remove us from our home, you seem to have missed important things. My sister needs her medication. If she does not get it, she gets very ill and she seems to have disappeared from your sight. I need to locate her and make sure she is all right until I can find something suitable to give her."

"Medication? I could smell no sickness on her." Justin commented, as though that were a normal thing to say in conversation.

"Our father gives her injections every night. If she misses them she gets sick and pale. He won't tell me what she has. I don't understand it myself." Ramona confessed. At this, the leader of his harem gave Justin a strange look and arched an elegant eyebrow. "Please, sir. I'm worried about she gets so sick." 
"Sounds a bit like Shane." Lillith purred.

"You don't say his name." Justin hissed rather suddenly. "No... She can't be like him, she's human and nothing more. Just a sickly little girl." He insisted, though already the issue of this mystery sickness was eating at him.

Ramona didn't want to know who Shane was though she did wonder about the name. Her father had shouted the name Shane once or twice on his way down to the basement rooms. 
"Ophelia?" She called, poking her head around the corner. Justin would still be able to see her. She planned to obey his words as best she could. After what she'd seen and heard that night, she knew they couldn't afford not to. "Come on, kiddo. Let me help. We'll find you some medicine. I promise."

It was in fact an hour over when Ophelia was usually given her injections. The younger sister would be found in the hallway, crouched in a corner with her hands over her ears. There were what sounded like whispering voices with no bodies, and a terrible thumping in her head, like the beat of a heart that was driving her to insanity.

Ramona crouched beside her sister and wrapped her arms around her as she always did when she found her this way. "It's going to be all right." She whispered, rocking with her. Though she said the words, she had no idea how she could make them true. At home she could go and get their father but here with all these strangers staring at them...

The beating would only get louder for Ophelia. The whispering would finally turn into a scream of agony and rage. Pain would tear through her body like someone was burning her alive and tearing the flesh from her legs.

Ophelia had thrust from her sister arms, writhing on the polished floor in agony. This was the worst it had ever been, or at least that Ramona would have ever seen. Ophelia's back was arching up as she screamed, and upon closer inspection her canine teeth had grown a little longer, and sharper. Though the floor was hard polished black marble, somehow Ophelia's finger nails were able to scratch deep tracks in the stone beside her.

"Do something!" Ramona was looking at Justin, knowing she really had no right to beg their captor for help. "I'll do anything! Please?! Help my sister!!" She was all but sobbing now, trying to gather the younger girl back into her arms.

Justin knew without a doubt what at least part of what he was seeing was; thirst. It couldn't be... could it? He had known right away this one didn't have the same blood as her sister, not entirely. "I'll help her." Justin confirmed as he knelt beside Ramona. "But only if you do something in return." He paused for a moment, reading Ramona's face. "You must stay here, with me, no matter where your sister may go."

Ramona was already nodding when the woman behind her stamped her foot. "We are not making her one of us!" Lilith hissed at her master, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched the smaller of the girls writhing in pain. "I refuse it!" 
"Please...I'll do anything you say...whatever it is..." Ramona whispered, a tear cling to the end of her button nose.

Justin narrowed his eyes at Lilith and shook his head. "You forget your place here, child." He hissed before returning his attention to Ramona. "I will have someone take her to our infirmary, though I am afraid it is a place you cannot follow. I assure you, no harm will come to her."

Lilith turned on heel, the sound sharp and commanding. The other women followed, the door to their room slamming closed.
Ramona nodded at Justin, knowing she had no other choice. She'd never seen her sister this bad. "Will you tell me sooner or later why you've done this to us?" She asked, getting to her feet as two men lifted her sister up and took her the rest of the way down the dark hall.

"The question you should be asking, is why your father did this, to both of you." Justin replied, though would offer no further answers right then. "Are you hungry?"

All the way to the infirmary Ophelia was screaming, begging for someone to just end the pain. She had no idea the solution was something so simple, and something her father had known since the day of her birth.

Ramona shook her head, no longer able to answer. She could still hear her sister's screams. She wanted to protest, to say her father loved them. But in this dark hall she found herself unable to say anything at all. All she really wanted to do was make sure her sister was going to be okay and sleep. It suddenly seemed like eternity since she'd slept. 

The agony inside Ophelia would only get worse until Justin did something about it. The screaming that echoed inside her mind was like pure fire now, white hot and alive with fire and pain. She would find herself starving as well, as if she were about to die from it.

"Your father isn't the saint you think him to be, child." Justin breathed when he saw the torture that Ramona was putting herself through. "Those screams, they are his fault, don't blame yourself." He added, reaching out as though to touch her cheek, before thinking better of it.

The infirmary was in fact a lab in the lower levels of the house, very much like the one the Von Trapp girls were prohibited from entering in their own home. Here the screaming Ophelia was laid out on a table, her wrists strapped down as she had been trying to tear through the bodice of her dress, thinking her blood itself were on fire. The 'people' here in the lab knew what this girl was suffering with and were quick to slide an IV into her arm and begin the blood transfusion.

Ramona turned her head away, her crimson colored hair blocking her face from his view. "He's all I have left. After you stole my mother...he's all I have left." She whispered. "I remember you that night. I let you in the house. It's my fault you took her...killed her. And now I've left my father all alone. What a terrible girl I am." 

After a while the screaming and howls of pain would go away for her but the one they connected her to was experiencing them still. Victor Von Trapp was making sure of it. He was torturing Justin's brother Shane in every manner he knew how. He may not be able to hurt the elder but he'd hurt the younger just shy of killing him.

"That's what he's been telling you?" Justin asked sadly. "Why would I come to you home, wait to be invited, all so I could take away a willing party and then kill her?" He asked. "Your mother is not dead, child."

The pain was gone, but Ophelia couldn't hide from the screams she head endured. She knew they weren't her own, but somehow they were familiar, like she had heard them before.

"What? Then...where is she? Is she sick? Is that why she left us behind?" Ramona returned her grey eyes to his face, searching for the truth. "Does father know?"

Shane remembered little about being anything but a creature. Images flashed in his mind occasionally of a taller brother with long blonde hair and golden eyes. And sometimes there would be a memory of a young girl with raven black hair. He'd bitten her. He'd nearly killed her. He'd given her his blood to save her though he wasn't sure why. Not that it mattered now. He was a beast. He wanted  nothing but death.

"He knows." Justin confirmed softly. "He made her life miserable and she... Wanted more. He punished the two of you for it, forcing you to live in solitude in a past he clings to."

Ophelia had fallen into a restless slumber after some time, and again she was dreaming. It was in these dreams she remembered that night in her father's lab, the young man she had seen there, and dared to show pity for. It was the feel of those teeth sinking into her slender throat that often woke her screaming. Whenever her 'medicine' was wearing off, that's when she heard his voice in her head, calling to her to return to him.

"It was you she wanted and got." Ramona went on for him, her tone bitter on its own. "I opened the door for you. I heard the way you called her name. I saw the way she ran to you and the two of you embraced. This is your fault. How dare you blame my father!" 
"Master, we have found your brother." One the servants broke into the conversation, knowing this couldn't wait. "He's in the Von Trapp labs."

Justin narrowed his golden eyes at Ramona slightly. "Tell me now how your father is a good man. My brother has been missing for ten years!" He hissed. "We aren't through here, you need to believe that your mother had a most unhappy existence with your father, a man she was sold to."

"And let me guess...we were forced on her. pitiful creatures that she didn't want and despised! No wonder it was so easy for her to leave us behind." Ramona muttered. "Who sold her then?"

Justin chuckled and shook his head. "Her family, who else?" He replied. "She was their prized jewel, worthy enough for a slice of the Von Trapp fortune, anyway." Another of his men was gesturing that they make haste to the Von Trapp estate now. "But all in good time, for now I owe your father another visit."

"You're taking us home?" Ramona could hardly hide the hope in her voice any better than she could hide ithe in her eyes. She was thinking it meant her sister's illness was too much for them to handle.

Justin tutted and tapped the tip of Ramona's pert nose with his finger. "Hardly. I am simply to reclaim what he stole from me. You could possibly accompany me, but your sister is... shall we say... a safety measure."